Real-time updates and new takes on important news stories

All posts tagged Osama bin Laden

Abbottabad, Pakistan–When a woman involved in a polio vaccine drive turned up at Osama bin Laden’s hideaway, she remarked to the men behind the high walls about the expensive SUVs parked inside. The men took the vaccine, apparently to administer to the 23 children at the compound, and told her to go away. The terror chief and his family kept well hidden behind thick walls in this northwestern hill town they shared with thousands of Pakistani soldiers. But glimpses of their life are emerging — along with deep skepticism that authorities didn’t know they were there. Read More »

After Osama bin Laden’s death and once the celebrating is done, attention will turn to details of the killing, its implications, and why it happened the way it did. What are the topics to likely to gain velocity as the week unfolds? Read More »

Publishers Monday scrambled to fill the Osama bin Laden book pipeline, hatching plans for digital titles they could publish almost instantly. Jon Meacham, an executive editor at Random House, is assembling an essay collection about the Al Qaeda leader that Random House expects to publish as an e-book next week. “He’s casting a wide net,” said Theresa Zoro, a spokeswoman for Random House, an imprint of Bertelsmann AG’s Random House Publishing Group. Others considering a new digital work on Mr. bin Laden include Free Press, an imprint of CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster publishing arm. Martha Levin, publisher of the Free Press, said the imprint was eager to publish a digital work by journalist Peter Bergen, whose well-received book “The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda,” it published in January. Read More »

The White House on Monday said it had been willing to take Osama bin Laden alive but knew the chances were slim once the al Qaeda leader faced off against U.S. forces at a remote compound in Pakistan.

“If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that,” said John Brennan, the top White House counter-terrorism official.

U.S. forces killed bin Laden on Sunday at a complex, high-walled compound set among other houses in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Brennan said bin Laden was protected by one of his wives acting as a human shield. Bin Laden and his wife were killed in the attack.

Bin Laden was buried at sea in accordance with Islamic practices, Brennan said. Read More »

RIYADH — Among the minority of people lamenting Osama bin Laden’s demise were members of the online jihadi community who normally act as arm-chair generals in the war on terror, debating the finer points of Islamist militant theology or minute political policy debates.

On Monday, many of these sites were consumed with admirers and acolytes mourning the death of the man known as “The Lion of Islam” and warning their enemies that they would seek retribution for the killing.

One poster on Al Sahab Islamist website said: “America, do not be too happy and don’t celebrate. You crusaders will soon cry hard for killing the lion of Islam.” Read More »

Afghan officials confirmed that the U.S. helicopter-borne teams that killed Osama bin Laden took off from eastern Afghanistan, and said that the choppers did not make any stopovers inside Pakistan on the way. Read More »

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Monday there would be no “direct impact” on funding levels for the war in Afghanistan as a result of the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Meanwhile another top Senate Democrat said the Pakistani military and intelligence faced questions over what they knew about bin Laden’s whereabouts in the country.

The Senate leaders were speaking at a brief press conference in the wake of news late Sunday that U.S. special forces had killed bin Laden after a raid on a compound outside Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.

Reid said he didn’t think there would be an immediate impact from the incident on congressional funding allocation for the war in Afghanistan. He also said the killing of the terrorist leader wouldn’t affect the scheduled timing of U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. That withdrawal is scheduled to begin no later than July. Read More »